It's "Merry Christmas", not just "happy holidays"

Maybe you celebrate Christmas, or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, or winter solstice, or maybe nothing at all except for some time off work or school. With the commercialization of the holiday season, all some know of the birth of Christ is what little bit appears in the Peanuts cartoons that air.

Just for clarity, I want you to know that Christmas is about Christ.

Common responses to the question "Who is Jesus Christ?" typically fall along these lines: a good man, a wise teacher, an outstanding example, an influential leader. I could probably name 20 historical figures, if not more, that fit this description. Those descriptions do fit my Lord, but He's more.

I celebrate Christmas, the remembrance of the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. More accurately I should say we celebrate the incarnation of God in human form, born of a virgin and fully human just as you and I but without sin as He did not inherit the sin nature of Adam, the fallen first man.

He didn't take on human form just to be a good man or a moral example. He came to be a sacrifice, to take on the sins of the whole world. No other method of atonement would do. No other sacrifice for sin would suffice. Since the wages of sin is death, when a man without Christ dies, he is bearing his own punishment for sin in two ways. The body dies; everyone's bodies die because of the curse of sin. More than that, the souls of unsaved man suffer an eternal death in hell, separated from God and all that is good. Christ, as a perfect man, did not have to die for His sin. He was executed in order to pay for all those that would and will accept His payment for their sins.

In this season of gift-giving, remember that God gave the greatest gift in sending His Son. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)